Practicing Presence: Finding Calm When Everything Feels On the Brink

Listen to the full talk on Practicing Presence on our Podcast, The Central Cast

I don’t know about you, but sometimes it feels like everything is on the brink. 

We’re living through a stressful moment. There are serious concerns about the economy, democracy, war, climate and the future of our communities. And on top of all of that, most of us are spending more time online than we probably should. We’re more connected to the outside world than human beings have ever been, and yet so many of us feel increasingly isolated and alone. 

It’s a deeply spiritually challenging time to be alive. 

And that makes meaningful community more important than ever. 

There is something vital about gathering regularly with other human beings to engage in contemplation together, to talk about things that matter, to share food and drink, and to participate in rituals and traditions that connect us to the past and to something larger than ourselves. That doesn’t have to happen at Central Avenue Church. I don’t believe there is one exclusive way to find meaningful community. But I do believe that gathering matters. 

So how do we remain mentally, emotionally and spiritually healthy in a time like this? 

For me, one answer is practicing presence.

What Does It Mean to Practice Presence?

For me, practicing presence means being fully attentive, receptive and grounded in the current moment. It means becoming more aware of the divine, of other people and of our own inner lives. 

It’s a spiritual discipline that shows up in most, if not all, of the major religious and spiritual traditions throughout history. 

Within Christianity, I think we see Jesus modeling presence again and again through deep listening and compassionate availability. The Gospels repeatedly tell us that Jesus was “moved with compassion.” His response to other people wasn’t simply intellectual. He was present enough to be moved by what they were experiencing. 

This seems especially important to me in light of the recent talk about the so-called “sin of empathy.” Whatever we may think of that phrase, it’s hard to reconcile the idea that empathy is somehow a spiritual problem with the Jesus we encounter in the Gospels. Jesus was deeply empathetic. He paid attention to people, listened to them, noticed their suffering and allowed himself to be moved by what they were experiencing. And then that compassion moved him to action. 

That’s an important part of practicing presence: being present enough to feel compassion. Empathy and compassion aren’t signs of spiritual weakness. They can be signs that we are genuinely connected to other people, to ourselves and to the divine.

And there are some very practical ways we can cultivate that kind of presence in our own lives.

1. Listen Deeply

One of the most important things I’ve learned in my work as a hospice chaplain is how to listen deeply. 

I meet with dying people in their homes every week, and one of the things that experience has taught me is that listening isn’t just about hearing someone's words. It’s about listening for the emotion underneath the words. 

When someone shares an important story, an experience, a belief or a conviction with us, it’s easy to get caught up in the content. We start thinking about whether we agree with them. We judge whether what they’re saying is logical or reasonable. We formulate our response while they’re still talking. 

But deep listening asks us to suspend those judgments, at least for a moment, and listen instead for what the person is feeling. 

What is the emotional payload behind their words? 

Why are they telling me this? 

What are they trying to communicate beneath the surface? 

I experienced this recently with a hospice patient who told me, very calmly and matter-of-factly, about her eight-year struggle with cancer and the fact that she knew she was going to die soon. 

It was heartbreaking, but the way she spoke about it made me realize that she had, to a great degree, made peace with what was happening. So I reflected that back to her. 

She agreed. 

As she talked about that peace and acceptance, she seemed to experience those feelings more deeply. It became a beautiful moment for both of us. 

She also shared some very traditional evangelical beliefs with me (beliefs that I personally find problematic). But in that moment, I set those judgments aside. What she was really trying to communicate was how connected she felt to God, to the source of her comfort, and to something larger than herself. 

I could affirm that. 

That’s what deep listening looks like. 

It doesn’t mean we have to agree with everything someone says. It means that, for a moment, we can be present enough to understand what another human being is actually experiencing. 

And I think we all need more of this.

2. Go Outside

Another way I practice presence is through walking and running. 

I’m a big believer in the spiritual and psychological benefits of getting outside and moving our bodies. I take an almost daily walk or run, and there’s something about being outside with trees, birds, bugs and sky that helps restore perspective. 

If you aren’t able to walk or run, that’s okay. Find somewhere outside where you can simply sit. The point isn’t athletic achievement. The point is getting out of our heads and out of our devices and into the physical world around us. 

You’ve probably heard the expression “touch grass,” usually as an insult directed at someone who has become a little too consumed by the internet. 

But honestly, it’s good advice. 

It’s remarkably easy to become immersed in our online worlds. We can spend hours consuming news, scrolling through social media, arguing with strangers and absorbing an endless stream of information and outrage. 

Sometimes we need to put the phone down and touch grass. 

This isn’t just a modern wellness trend, either. It’s rooted in ancient spiritual wisdom. Early Buddhist traditions included structured walking meditation. Early Christian monks, including the Desert Fathers and Mothers, used walking in silence and spending time in nature as ways of praying with the body and grounding themselves. 

There is something deeply human about an embodied experience in the natural world. 

Sometimes we need to remember that we have bodies.

3. Learn to Watch Your Thoughts

I’ve also been getting into meditation. 

One practice I’ve found particularly helpful from Richard Alpert is very simple: concentrate on the natural rise and fall of your abdomen as you breathe. 

Rise and fall.
Rise and fall.
Rise and fall. 

And then, inevitably, the thoughts begin. 

I need to pay that bill. 
My knee hurts. 
I’m hungry. 
I forgot to do that thing. 
What if this happens? 
What about that? 

At first, it can feel like the meditation isn’t working because your mind keeps wandering.

But that is the practice. 

One of the things meditation can teach us is that the mind is a thought-and-feeling machine. It produces thoughts and feelings all day long. 

We don’t have to stop that process. We probably couldn’t even if we tried. 

Instead, we can learn not to overidentify with everything our minds produce. 

I think of it like standing beside a stream. As you watch the water, a stick might float by. Then a leaf. Maybe a fish. 

You notice them, but you don’t have to grab onto them. 

Our thoughts can be like that. 

They’re going to come. We can notice them and let them pass. 

Over time, we can begin to understand something incredibly liberating: 

We are not our thoughts. 

Our thoughts and feelings matter. They can tell us important things, and we shouldn’t dismiss them. But we don’t have to believe every thought or allow every passing emotion to define who we are. 

We can learn to become the observer of our thoughts rather than being completely controlled by them. 

For me, this points toward something even deeper spiritually. 

I believe that at our deepest level, we are more than the constantly changing collection of thoughts and feelings in our heads. I believe we are manifestations of something much larger: what Christianity calls God, what the Gospel of John calls the Logos, what other traditions have called the One, the Source, ultimate reality or Brahman. 

As Paul says in Acts 17, “In him we live and move and have our being.” 

I believe this is part of what the Gospel reveals about human beings: that we are deeply and fundamentally connected to God and to one another. 

Practicing presence is one way of embracing and embodying that reality.

The Danger of Spiritual Bypassing

But there is an important caution here. 

Mindfulness, meditation and other spiritual practices can be misused. 

There is a term for this: spiritual bypassing. 

Spiritual bypassing happens when we use spirituality to avoid confronting difficult realities, taking responsibility or doing the hard work of change. 

We’ve seen this in religious communities for a long time. “Thoughts and prayers” can become a way of avoiding meaningful action in response to violence and injustice. 

But spiritual bypassing isn’t limited to religion. 

Mindfulness and meditation can be used in the same way. 

Consider how corporate America has sometimes adopted mindfulness as a way of addressing employee stress without addressing the conditions creating that stress in the first place. If someone is burned out because of an unhealthy workplace, giving them a meditation app doesn’t necessarily solve the problem. 

It might simply help them tolerate the problem. 

We can do the same thing individually. 

It can be tempting to say, “I’m not my thoughts,” and use that idea to avoid dealing with something we actually need to confront. We can use spirituality to avoid accountability, difficult relationships, painful truths or meaningful action. 

That isn’t what practicing presence is for. 

Presence should help us encounter reality more honestly, not escape from it.

There Is No Self-Care Without Collective Care

This leads me to what may be the most important takeaway from all of this: 

There is no such thing as self-care without collective care. 

We are deeply and inextricably connected to other people and to the world around us. 

Practicing presence means being present with ourselves, but it also means being present with other people. It means being present in the social and political realities of our lives. It means refusing to create an alternate reality where everything is okay simply because we have found a way to feel peaceful. 

The world is not okay. 

People are hurting. 

Our communities are struggling. 

There are difficult realities that require our attention and our action. 

Spirituality cannot be an escape hatch from those realities. 

Instead, I think our spiritual practices should help us become more present to them. 

When we learn to listen deeply, we become more present to other people. 

When we walk outside, we become more present to our bodies and the world around us. 

When we meditate, we become more aware of our thoughts without allowing them to control us. 

And when we practice all of this together, we can become more capable of meeting the world as it actually is, with compassion, clarity, courage and a willingness to act. 

That, to me, is what practicing presence is really about. 

Not escaping the world. 

Being fully here. 

And then, from that place of presence, choosing how we will live in it together.